Up close: Girl's 5th birthday gift becomes book

John Roberts calls Turtle Eyes a book that parents and children alike can enjoy. (Courtesy photo)

When John Roberts found out he was going to be a father, he had to make a choice.

He'd had a successful life as a writer. He had won the National Endowment for the Arts Single Artist Fellowship for Nonfiction and regularly wrote for newspapers and magazines. He was fictional editor for The Bloomsbury Review and published a fine-print book called "Ondina" in 1985. Roberts says a story he wrote in the late '70s about the last grizzly bear killed in Colorado sparked the Division of Wildlife to conduct bear biology studies that they'd been reluctant to do.

But, now a new father, instead of covering stories, he wanted to be there with his daughter while she grew up.

"I missed it a lot -- but I did it because I didn't miss her," he says. "I turned all of my faculties toward observing what I was learning from our daughter as she was growing up."

Little did he know at the time, his stay-at-home plan would ultimately lead to his next career move: a children's book titled "Turtle Eyes: A Family Novel," released in 2011.

He started the book nearly 20 years ago, as a birthday gift for his daughter on her fifth birthday.

The storyline: When Hally and her dad go to take photos of paintings of a gifted wildlife artist name Jake Bandanna, they think they see him momentarily turn into a turtle. Surprised, skeptical and intrigued to discover what really happened, the family is drawn to him and his project helping endangered desert tortoises.

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Roberts calls it a family book, one that parents and children can both enjoy, and one that children can re-read again at different ages to take away a different message.

We wanted to learn more about this book, so we asked Roberts a few questions:

What is the story of this story?

It started out as a 32-page picture book for my daughter, Halcyon, when she was about to turn 5. One of the concerns I was dealing with then was this overwhelming overt and covert message constantly churning in our society of girls not being as good as boys. So I wrote about a girl hero.

We also noticed when we read these children's books to her, they were beautifully illustrated with tons of fun stories, but beyond sentiment and nostalgia and little humor, they didn't have anything for the grown-ups. So I gave myself the challenge of trying to write a story that appealed to the whole spectrum of family.

As I began flushing out my initial idea ... there was so much more I wanted to do with it. I worked for a couple years to make it into a full-blown novel and sat it on the shelf for a long time.

My family convinced me to pull it out a couple years ago.

You wrote a column called "On the Fringe." What was it about, and how did it influence your new book?

The fringe, to me, is the concept of ecotones, where one or more ecosystems come together. Where the plains meet the mountains, where the meadow meets the forest. That's where the action is.

I see that as a metaphor for a lot that we are engaged in as human beings. If we can understand that exchange of energy, we can understand who we are and who we are with others.

As a parent, you have ecotones, too: How this kid's wonderful vision and imagination helps me grow. Linking a kid's vision and an adult's vision as they both grow is to me an ecotone. That's central to the book.

Beyond exploring and appreciating nature's mysteries, what are some deeper lessons you hope people take from the book?

One, that there are always going to be problems, and if you rely on the sense of your relationship to solve them, the answers will come to you. You don't have to rely on a book about counseling kids. Have the courage to go into new territory.

It's also about imagination -- being part of nature's imagination. Working with it rather than trying to conquer it gives you a way to see a new light on problems.

What does the name, "Turtle Eyes," mean?

It's about seeing with more than just your eyes. Jake Bandanna (the wildlife artist) has the girl circle up her eyes as an initiation into this, showing her maybe there's a different way to see. It's a little magic on its own. It happens that everything he does, though it seems mysterious and magical, has a natural connotation. But when we're in the process of discovering, we don't test the trick.

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